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May 1, 2015

Word Balloon

An e-mail about a campaign to get Cosmo treated like a porn magazine because its dicey sexual content is harmful to minors got us thinking about magazines in general, whether minors think of them as a bad-for-you delivery system when they can get cable TV for free, and how much attention we ourselves even pay to magazines anymore. We chatted about the relative dangers of sexual content vs. unrealistic expectations of beauty and body image; our own experiences with magazines' promises of coolness and perfect dried-flower arrangements; whether anybody understands what wrapping something in a brown paper wrapper even means anymore; and the way that a world in which entertainment can be delivered instantaneously and in greater quantity than we can possibly consume makes waiting for an issue of a magazine to be delivered seem impossibly quaint.

One of the things we used to depend on magazines for was telling us how to dress (even though Seventeen deeply betrayed young Terri's trust), and now we're more likely to turn to Twitter for interpretations of dress codes and occasion-appropriate attire -- as both Catherine and NPR's Linda Holmes recently did. We shared our preferred freelance uniforms, our exhaustion at the prospect of dressing up, our search for perfectly comfortable footwear, and our trust in Pinterest to provide guidance for women of our particular demographic.

Finally, we mentioned our recommendations for the week. Catherine pointed us to an article titled "What Training for the Boston Marathon Taught Me About Fashion, and Myself" for further thoughts on the meaningfulness of what we wear; Amanda told everyone to go online shopping for clothes that you don't have to go somewhere and try on in front of a nasty mirror (to which Terri added that the website Mode-sty will help you find things that won't show your underwear like you're a twentysomething Cosmo reader); Nicole gave us her Pinterest search formula; and Terri talked about a "podcast upfront" she attended featuring NPR podcast hosts and a lot of talk about the significance and future of podcasts, commentary on which you can find by looking up the #HearItUpfront hashtag on Twitter, where you may come upon this photo of the back of Terri's head and the green shirt she chose to wear).

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)